


Too hard.

by orphan_account



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Underfell, But mostly just papyrus, Gen, King Papyrus - Underfell version, Referenced Underfell, Sans - Freeform, Underfell Papyrus, Underfell Sans, Undyne - Freeform, a whole bunch of people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 22:32:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6772930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Papyrus is king, and being king surprisingly gives him a lot of time to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too hard.

**Author's Note:**

> I have writer's block and I'm trying to Underfell.

Asgore is dead. Undyne is missing. A lot of people are dead. A human had entered the Underground a few months ago and killed nearly everyone who stood in its way.

Papyrus walked down the hallway, shoulders hunched in an uncharacteristic manner, pinpricks of light in his sockets trained on the golden marble floors. The crown on his head felt heavy and the cape on his shoulders felt as if it was dragging him down.

It’s hard to reform a kingdom that had, and for the most part still has, a mindset of ‘kill or be killed’. 

Papyrus never really liked that mindset. It took away too many good things in his life. Things he never wanted to lose. The mindset turned his father into a workaholic who holed himself up in his lab until he died. It turned his brother into the most paranoid monster in the Underground. It turned his best friend against him. It turned him into a killer.

(The day he first killed was probably the day he found that, though he still didn't like the dumb mindset, he didn't really mind as much.)

So when the crown of the kingdom was up for grabs - and surprisingly no one made a move to take the title as king or queen - Papyrus eagerly stepped up and took it. He had a plan to remove the twisted kill or be killed mindset, a plan to turn the Underground into a less merciless place. 

It’s… harder than he thought.

He didn’t expect the job to be easy, no. But he didn’t expect it would be this hard, either! This was probably why nobody wanted to take up the job. People were in pits of despair, there was low productivity, the farmers had been  _ slaughtered  _ and a famine was in sight. The only thing keeping the masses from cannibalizing was the fact that Sans instructed that the food storage in the castle be distributed to the people.

Oh, holy smokes. Sans.

Sans, the laziest monster he knew, was surprisingly working harder than Papyrus thought he was capable of doing. Papyrus, at first, didn’t bother with giving Sans any job to do, considering how he never even did his job when he was a sentry. 

But when the electricity in the Underground was going haywire and no one knew what to do, Sans stepped up, pushing away what little lab assistants the deceased Dr. Alphys had and fixed the errors in the CORE as if it had been nothing. It was rather petrifying to see Sans fiddle with the machinery, and even more terrifying to see that he actually knew what he was doing. 

So after that whole fiasco, the scientists who weren’t killed signed a petition that Sans be elected as the new Royal Scientist. That was how Sans gained the position of a Royal Scientist.

Sans didn’t say anything when Papyrus talked about it when they had dinner together. He just went to work the next day, without a word. He didn’t even bother saying good morning when he walked past Papyrus.

(Come to think of it, when was the last time they exchanged ‘good morning’s?)

(When he had been twelve years old. That’s been over a decade.)

Papyrus hasn’t seen Sans personally in two weeks now. His brother had been keeping a close eye (socket, heh) at the CORE’s circuitry, claiming that some engines and wires were starting to be frayed and needed to be replaced. It was probably true, considering the amount of blackouts that would happen from time to time. Sans would leave voice mails every now and then and, though Papyrus never replied to any, he appreciated them.

He misses his brother.

Papyrus found it funny how, before when he wasn’t king and merely vice-captain (second to Undyne. He was always second to Undyne.) of the Royal Guard, he never _missed_ Sans. All he cared about was that Sans was out of reach of crazed monsters - because, damn it, Sans is too _fragile_ \- and monitored (that was why he urged Sans to be a sentry anyway, so that Papyrus becomes his boss and he gets to micromanage everything his brother does).

(And to make sure that his brother doesn't do anything...stupid. Like, take a walk off a cliff or something. Nyeh, heh...)

Guess what those old wise men in books said is true. People won’t miss the ones they have until they’re out of their reach.

Sighing, Papyrus stepped into his chambers and discarded the royal garments he wore for appearances. He sat down by his desk, pulled out a ballpoint pen and paper, and started to write. Not a letter. Just a note.

“THIS IS TOO HARD."


End file.
